For their latest pop-up exhibition of contemporary art and crafted objects, curatorial duo-Contemporary and Country (C&C) have brought together a collection of one-off pieces by well-regarded creators based throughout East Anglia. East to East has new work by 35 professional artists and makers from Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire that exemplify the simple lines and natural colours inspired by Japanese and Chinese art. It is being held in the Palladian splendour of Houghton Hall Stables, Norfolk. All the exhibits are for sale, prices start from £15 for an espresso cup, up to £7,000 for a landscape of the Essex coast. There is a unique work to suit most budgets and that would grace many different types of interior.
Contributing artists and makers follow in the tradition of creating their work by hand, using techniques that require skill in the manual manipulation of their materials. This may sound like stating the obvious. It isn’t! The art and craft assembled by C&C is not made by anonymous studio elves, or a 3D printer. For ecological reasons they tend to feature artists and makers who use sustainable materials and who work for a domestic scale. They prioritise work that depicts natural subject matter or follows a recognised production process, like basket making or glass blowing, but always in a contemporary way.
Their pop-ups are not held in intimidating, frigid gallery spaces, and although C&C have put on exhibitions in purpose-built galleries (as visitors to last summer’s River’s Edge exhibition at Aldeburgh’s BallroomArts will attest), the work on display is life-affirming and is not diminishing or alienating. Each pop-up exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to experience an architecturally unusual building, buy one of the exhibits and to take it home. What gallery or museum allows its visitors to do that?
The ‘East to East’ exhibition encompasses sculpture and handmade objects, as well as paintings on canvas, wooden panel, paper or fabric, ceramics – with an emphasis on expertise in Japanese and Chinese techniques like raku, porcelain, decorative glaze, and lacquer, folded and cut paper as well as woodblock prints. The show starts with spinnaker sail-like pieces by Suffolk sculptor Esmond Bingham and a single glazed linear structure by ceramic artist Annie Turner are shown alongside large canvases by Great Yarmouth-based painter Katarzyna Coleman. All three artists reference the features and architecture of the harbour areas near their studios.
Opposite are three large paintings of the Essex marshes around the river Stour. The open views are artfully described in pencil sketches and diptych canvases by landscape painter Simon Carter in split east/west views, across the fluid interplay between tidal pools and creek, as the land peters out into the estuary. One step further north Suffolk-based ceramicist Steven Will’s handmade porcelain vessels are moulded by hand into classic shapes that exploit the creamy purity of their material. Artists like Amanda Edgcombe and Tassie Russell, both also working in rural Suffolk produce finely wrought graphic prints and paintings, that embrace the calligraphic process, as well as light and shade, texture, and surface incident.
Painter Peter Wylie has returned repeatedly to his hometown of Lowestoft for inspiration. In previous pop-up exhibitions C&C have shown his evocative coastal seascapes, looking east out across the North Sea and his series of prints that celebrated the east coast’s WWII coastal defences. For ‘East to East’ they have included a selection of recent prints and several intricately painted canvases of modernist buildings. They are exemplar renderings of early twentieth century architecture by Lubetkin, and Bauhaus luminaries Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier who applied Japanese architectural qualities and plotted the course of building design. They championed lighter, more open interiors with a higher proportion of window to wall that heralded the innovative features of modern architecture that, for better or worse, endure to this day.
‘East to East’ accompanies a solo exhibition of sculpture and paintings by internationally acclaimed artist Sean Scully – ‘Smaller Than The Sky’ at Houghton Hall, Norfolk. For opening times and ticket prices to enter the Houghton estate visit houghtonhall.com
Visit contemporaryandcountry.com to discover more information about their plans and to see a whole range of artists and makers, with work for sale. For more details and to be among the first to hear about their forthcoming exhibition programme join their mailing list. There are a couple of group shows in King’s Lynn, September/October 2023 and Cambridge (February/March 2024) – in the pipeline.
